Yes, their plans are less effective if they don’t.
This is all part of a broader strategy of breaking down silos across mediums and planning all video together.
We also recommended removing heavy TV viewers from streaming and digital campaigns to reduce added frequency to an already saturated section of the audience.
Now let’s talk about an area where digital-first buyers are missing the market: factoring in media markets.
What are media markets?
Media markets are geographic zones built around how broadcast signals actually travel. In the early TV era, the FCC and Nielsen grouped counties that received the same over-the-air signals and watched the same local stations.
These boundaries follow terrain, tower placement, and signal strength, not state lines or political maps.
How do Media Markets impact political buyers?
States and legislative districts rarely line up cleanly with media markets. That creates three common problems:
Multiple media markets overlap your campaign geography
Buyers must negotiate with several stations across markets to buy the same programming
You pay for voters who cannot vote for your candidate
Voters outside your political geography still see your ads, which means wasted impressions
Some markets barely overlap your district
Broadcast often isn’t worth buying, so some eligible voters will not see your ads at all
Case Study: Georgia
In this simplified scenario, assume:
Statewide GA linear TV CPM: $10
Target: Likely Persuadable Voters
Viewability: 100%
Now layer in media markets.
72% of Georgia’s audience lives in the Atlanta DMA
The remaining 28% is fragmented across 10 smaller markets
If a campaign buys a heavier broadcast schedule in the 3 markets that are 100% in Georgia, 81% of the audience has a better opportunity to see the ad.
The remaining 19%, voters that have less of an opportunity to see the ad, represents roughly 64,000 Likely Persuadable Voters.
In Jon Ossoff’s 2020 Senate race, the final vote margin was ~55,000 votes.
GA Market | Audience Size | CPM | % of Audience | % of Geo | eCPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Atlanta | 243,439 | $10 | 4% | 100% | $250 |
Macon | 21,138 | $10 | 4% | 100% | $250 |
Savannah | 18,511 | $10 | 3% | 66% | $505 |
Augusta-Aiken | 15,793 | $10 | 4% | 70% | $357 |
Albany, GA | 9,405 | $10 | 3% | 100% | $333 |
Columbus, GA | 7,978 | $10 | 3% | 50% | $667 |
Tallahassee-Thomasville | 7,470 | $10 | 3% | 43% | $775 |
Chattanooga | 6,264 | $10 | 3% | 33% | $1,010 |
Jacksonville | 5,617 | $10 | 3% | 10% | $3,333 |
Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll | 2,472 | $10 | 3% | 4% | $8,333 |
Dothan | 336 | $10 | 4$ | 8% | $3,125 |
What do digital-native buyers get wrong?
Digital and streaming have rarely had to worry about media markets or geographical waste. Digital-native buyers have always had the ability to target at the household level. TV buyers obsess over media markets.
This is a huge disconnect.
Voters switch back and forth between linear and streaming, seeing ads in both places. Buyers are still siloed.
Digital teams need to understand TV plans, points, and media markets and adjust digital and streaming plans to complement linear, just as linear should be bought in a way that compliments streaming.
Effective digital/streaming plans should:
Use both TRPs and eCPM so both teams can compare mediums in their “native” currencies
Increase frequency in media markets where linear TV is light or absent
Use ACR viewership audiences to exclude voters in your audience that see the ad at frequency on TV
Voters can’t tell the difference between linear TV and streaming ads, media plans shouldn’t either.